Neighbourhood Watch

It was Neighbour Day the other day. A bit over a week ago, Sunday 30th March. It's a brilliant idea - get to know your neighbours, talk to them, foster a greater sense of community caring. It can begin modestly - introduce yourself and give them your phone number. Make sure they know they can ring you if they need to.

Most of us have had neighbours whom we would rather didn't ring. Let's face it, we would rather they weren't our neighbours. But for every one of them, there are people like John and Margaret, who live across the road from me. They've been there for nearly 30 years, raised two kids and aren't going anywhere. They are kind, friendly and enormously tolerant of our curious and talkative children. They know everyone and the entire history of the street, which is handy when you first move in. John has a lot of tools, all of which he seems happy to lend, even to a rank amateur like me. In my first conversation with him, he told they'd thought about moving a few times but couldn't find anywhere as nice as this. I know what he means.

I live in a very leafy part of Sydney. Not wealthy-leafy, but comfortable-leafy. It's a quiet suburb isolated by geography, which means there's no through-traffic. It has a thriving local shops, a school and a lot of green space. The street we're on is short and quickly peters out into bush, there is one street off it that leads to a park with oval, playground and tennis courts. Kids around here really do play in the street - they ride their bikes and skateboards; sometimes they play cricket or kick a football. It's very much about children, this area, and it feels like a bit like the Sydney I grew up in, 30 years ago.

It's not perfect - far from it. You couldn't live here without a car and lots of families have two. There are only a couple of buses an hour through the day and the nearest railway station is a brisk 30 minute walk. If you're really into street life that isn't kids playing, or people walking their dogs, you'd quickly become very bored indeed. Leichhardt, (which I love) it ain't.

It isn't a good place for arachnophobes either, especially at this time of year when there are, I don't know, about a million spiders living in my garden. Most of them are beautiful and useful, some of them are not very nice.

But it does have a feeling of neighbourhood - a sense of community. Last Friday on the show, we did a talkback on this. Not my neighbourhood but the idea of it - how neighbourhoods have changed and are changing. What we've lost and what we've gained.

My guests, Hugh Mackay and Karen Malone, are both smart people who've thought a lot about this issue. And we took calls from listeners too. I thought we'd hear from people with complaints, or at least trenchant observations, about what's going wrong in our neighbourhoods. But what we (mostly) got were optimists and doers - people working to build community, active in their neighbourhoods and getting involved. Many were clear-eyed about the challenges but keen to be part of something.

As a journalist I was hoping for a bit more niggle and grit. As a person I was rather heartened. You can listen if you like.